About the WebinarIn this fourth installment of the BRT Planning Guide webinar series, author Andre Frieslaar will present on “Volume 6: Infrastructure”. In this webinar, attendees will be introduced to the various components that make up the family of BRT infrastructure. These include the busways on which the buses travel, the terminals, stations and stops where passengers board and alight the buses and the depots where buses are refueled, repaired and stored when not in use. BRT infrastructure is geared towards giving buses priority over general traffic in congested road networks, and ensuring efficient and reliable travel times for buses and their passengers along BRT routes.

Andre Frieslaar is one of the BRT Planning Guide authors and a champion for change and development in public transport. He has raised awareness around sustainable transport solutions through local and international papers and presentations. Andre has been director of HHO Africa since 2000 is currently the project executive for detailed design and implementation of the BRT infrastructure for Durban (South Africa). He served as a BRT Infrastructure advisor to National and Regional Transport Authorities in South Africa, and his projects have received various national awards for technical excellence in 2012 and 2013. He initially worked on Traffic Engineering and Transportation Planning projects, but has become an expert in the field of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) infrastructure design and implementation. Andre was the project leader of the infrastructure team responsible for the Cape Town (South Africa) MyCITI Phase 1 BRT system. He is a member of the Transportation Division of the South African Institute of Civil Engineers (SAICE), and currently serves as a Vice President at SAICE. He was named the SAICE “Engineer of the Year” in 2013. He has a Bachelor’s of Science in Civil Engineering and a Master’s of Science in Transportation from the Texas A&M University (TAMU) though an IRF Fellowship.

Aerial view of Houston, Texas

Transportation scholar Daniel Chatman’s latest research builds on two decades of experience looking largely at the U.S. context. Chatman has studied how people get to their jobs and what that means for metropolitan economies. He has investigated traffic patterns, job sprawl, and mortgage subsidies for homes in high-density neighborhoods with good transit access. In 2013, he and a co-author argued that transit could be producing as much as $1.8 billion annually in economic benefits for cities.

Daniel Chatman will be speaking at MOBILIZE Santiago on urban development and dynamic cities, including national social housing policies and the integration (or lack thereof) of transit and access.

ITDP spoke to Chatman from office at the University of California-Berkeley, where he teaches in the Department of City and Regional Planning, to discuss his work and reflect on this year’s MOBILIZE theme, “just and inclusive cities become the new normal”.

ITDP: Your research has shown that transportation can allow for higher densification of cities and therefore higher productivity due to agglomeration economies. Are U.S. cities finally waking up to those benefits?

Planners throughout the United States are all being trained to believe things like smart growth and public transportation is a good idea however, cities don’t necessarily believe this is true. And the reason cities don’t is because people don’t, and the reason that people don’t is because people have their own concerns. They’re focused on their immediate impact of various kinds of funding and investment decisions, and those are neighborhood-level impacts in many cases. In some cases, people do believe and are willing to support massive sales tax increases, for example, in places like Los Angeles and Seattle.

And yet, as to whether that support ends up translating into actual major changes in densification of cities and in ridership at all, that’s a separate question. We have a lot of regulations that get in the way of those benefits being realized.

The fact is that, yes, in the United States, we have higher productivity in denser cities that have better transit systems. But if you look at those cities, you also have increasing income polarization. We have both of those things partly because housing is really expensive in those same places.

Planners tend to be on board because they believe in the power of cities. But sometimes our vision of beautiful cities with great amenities is a vision that’s more geared towards higher-income people, so you want to be careful about it.

How can we convince cities that parking reform is one of the best ways to improve equity in cities?

Off-street parking requirements increase the cost of housing, especially in dense environments. It’s not uncommon to see construction cost requirements for structured parking of $60,000 per space. That’s a lot of money.

Those requirements are an equity issue because of the housing cost, but they’re actually more pernicious than that, because they change the sort of housing that’s developed in the first place. Developers are more likely to build luxury housing in response to having to provide two parking spaces per unit.

There is some evidence that parking requirements in some places are a bigger constraint upon densification than anything else. That is to say, it isn’t the height requirement, existing zoning allocation, or the by-right density, it’s the parking that stops people from developing as densely as they would.

Mbugus Medak – Matatu: The interior of a Kenyan matatu that plies the streets of Nairobi (Mbugus Medak, Wikimedia Commons)

What sort of impact do you think that federal funding, or lack thereof in the current political climate, will have on transport planning in U.S. cities, and can they move forward anyway?

There are lots cities that were already moving ahead without federal funding, which is now a smaller fraction of all new transit starts anyway. Even though I’m critical of how transit projects have been funded by the federal government, it’s not as though putting all the money into roads is a good solution either.

The current political climate is going to have a negative impact on city sustainability. For example, the Trump administration was considering this trillion-dollar infrastructure plan the Department of Transportation put out a 50-slide list of potential projects. Most of it was maintenance and construction of roadway facilities. I don’t think that’s a positive thing, but I do think that it’s not going to have as big of an impact as it might have 20 years ago, because of the fact that cities have been looking for, at the state and at the local level, alternative funding sources and are increasingly relying on them.

Ultimately, the smaller cities will be the ones who feel the pain more, because it’s the bigger cities and the more affluent states that are going to get away with these sorts of tax increases that fund transportation. The outlying areas will suffer more.

This interview is the part of the MOBILIZE Santiago Speaker Series. In this series, we will feature interviews with researchers from VREF’s Future Urban Transport where will discuss their work in sustainable transport and reflecting on MOBILIZE Santiago’s theme: Just and Inclusive Cities Become the New Normal. To learn more about MOBILIZE Santiago and how you can register to attend the summit in Chile, visit mobilizesummit.org.

Jacob Mason, ITDP Transport Research and Evaluation Manager, reports back from the UN World Data Forum in South Africa on how transport data can help create sustainable cities.

The pace of change in cities has reached breakneck speed. Mayors are often so overwhelmed with day-to-day issues that they have a hard time thinking about the long-term effects of all the decisions they make. It’s often hard to even tell if things are getting better or worse. Transportation data in many cities is either hard to obtain or missing entirely.

As part of ITDP’s effort to influence better decision making by mayors and elected officials, ITDP traveled to Cape Town, South Africa for the first ever UN World Data Forum. The forum gathered data experts from around the world to share data related ideas and achievements.

Hazer Gazer is an app that mines all relevant data about haze and makes it accessible in a friendly platform to support a response.

New Sources of DataIn Cape Town, ITDP met with representatives from the European Union who have developed a guide for how to work with private institutions and business to use their data without hurting their business model. The upshot: make the data anonymous so it can’t be tied to any person, and aggregate it so it doesn’t give away industry secrets.

A representative from Facebook spoke about their work doing exactly this with governments to help them better understand their countries and cities. In addition, several researchers talked about their experience working with anonymized and aggregated cell phone records. This private information was used to help target malaria treatment centers in Africa, but could also be useful in better understanding how people travel around cities.

Limited access to specific data also presents a challenge.

Combine Data to Fill GapsAnother major challenge in data collection is achieving complete coverage. For example, collecting data on walkability requires physically examining each block to understand the characteristics of the built environment (streets and buildings) there. This is very expensive and time consuming, meaning that typically only a sample of city blocks can actually be surveyed. To improve the coverage of data, researchers at the forum showed that by combining multiple data sources, they could infer data for locations not covered by the initial in-depth data collection. Sources of additional data include satellite imagery, cell phone data, and social media, which can provide a more complete data coverage of an area. Researchers then found relationships between the original sample data and the more complete data set. Often the relationships were weak, but with multiple weak relationships to complete data sources, the researchers were able to reasonably infer data for locations that were not surveyed.

What’s Next?To better translate these ideas into practice, ITDP is hosting a Mobility Data Forum in San Francisco in partnership with Microsoft, where these ideas and other can all meet to develop concrete ideas for translating data into indicators. These indicators can help transport planners understand how people are moving in a city and track progress over time. With this information, leaders can make better decisions about where a city is headed, bringing us closer to sustainable cities and a healthier, more equitable planet.

Meeting of the Minds, a global knowledge sharing platform, spoke with Dan Chatman of UC Berkeley’s Department of City and Regional Planning about the integration of paratransit services with Bus Rapid Transit around the world. Dr. Chatman studies travel behavior and the built environment, residential and workplace location choice, “smart growth” and municipal fiscal decision making, and the connections between public transportation, immigration and the economic growth of cities.

What kind of research are you doing with VREF’s support?

We are looking at Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), which is a publicly-run new public transit service that runs along high-volume corridors with service characteristics that make it faster than ordinary buses, but is usually much cheaper than passenger rail service. Specifically, we are studying issues around bringing in BRT while integrating pre-existing transportation services that are privately provided in many cities around the world. These services include minibuses run by private drivers who stop at multiple and flexible pick-up locations along their routes. These bus services take different forms around the world; they’re called “colectivos” in parts of Latin America, “matatus” in Kenya, and “kombis” in South Africa. This kind of privately-provided public transit is often referred to overall as “paratransit,” although in the US, paratransit refers to specialized services for the elderly and people with disabilities. Also in the US, public transit is almost exclusively run by public agencies; any privately operated services are usually done under a very tight contract. This not the case elsewhere in the world, especially in Latin America and Africa where our work is focused.

There are several good reasons to implement Bus Rapid Transit. It overcomes safety issues with private operators who may be unscrupulous, involved in organized crime, not paying their drivers very much, or running vehicles that are unsafe or poorly maintained. Over-competition and drivers easily joining private service consortiums can also increase the number of vehicles clogging up roads, leading to more congestion. These problems have been used as justifications for bringing in BRT.

BRT is presumed to be an improvement to existing public transportation. However, it involves big changes – both institutionally and in the way service is implemented – and requires big investment. Also, high quality service tends to be provided along a limited number of radial axis trunk lines, which requires additional feeder services to get to and from the stations. The switch-over from privately provided transit services to a centrally provided system is definitely beneficial to some people but could be problematic for others.

It sounds as though the benefits and challenges of Bus Rapid Transit aren’t always straight forward. How are you finding out what makes a BRT system successful?

We’re studying what is actually happening in places where BRT has been implemented. We’re looking at the before and after situation for people, the issues, the improvements, the problems, how BRT was rolled out, and how it is structured in terms of services and coverage. The big question that hasn’t been looked at before is to better understand the experiences of users so that pre-existing services can be integrated into the new system without increasing wait times or travel distances too much.

Passengers on a BRT bus in Dar Es Salaam

In many cities, existing privately-provided public transportation services have been told they had to shut down or be restructured because they would compete with the new BRT line. That means users no longer have a “one seat” ride—they can no longer get all the way to their destination without transferring.

What cities have you looked at regarding BRT implementation?

We are looking at five cities: Capetown, South Africa; Baranquilla, Columbia; Quito, Ecudaor; Jakarta, Indonesia; and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

We’re focusing on second-tier cities, not the big cities of four million or more that are able to stage pretty good BRT, typically along with underground rail. Smaller cities, especially those in developing countries, just don’t have the same resources so they struggle to provide quality public transportation service. This is where BRT has a potential advantage because it is cheaper than rail, or at least it should be. But cities need very strong leadership and the right political moment to allow large swathes of public roads to be set aside to make Bus Rapid Transit competitive and beneficial. That transition is fiscally cheaper than developing either an underground or above-ground elevated public transportation system. But politically it’s very difficult to do and we don’t have a formula for solving that problem anywhere.

Are you seeing any trends or patterns emerging between BRT systems?

We’ve found there are actually more similarities than there are differences in the way that BRT has been implemented. This is partly because cities have similar issues, but it is partly because they are applying the BRT concept without customizing it to their needs. So far we think there are three main lessons learned, which have to do with how the systems are geographically structured to meet existing transport flows; how pre-existing operators are integrated with the new BRT service; and how the systems compete with the push to automobility in developing cities.

Bus corridor in Quito, Ecuador

BRT is typically set up in terms of trunk and feeder lines in which a BRT line runs in and out of some center of activity, with other lines running out to residential centers. The planning process tends to focus on which corridors to choose and then how to get people to stations on those trunk lines.

In Baranquilla, they want to expand but it’s hard to make money to cover costs. Similarly, in Capetown, they are running one main line that serves an apartheid-era township on the outskirts of the metropolitan area. Phase 2 is currently more of an express bus. Again funding is an issue. These things can take time to work out. Quito started 30 to 40 years ago and they now have three different BRT lines. It happens to be a long narrow city so in a way it’s perfectly set up for BRT because it is already a corridor. Geography to some extent dictates whether a BRT system works well or not.

Another big difference between cities implementing BRT is in the nature of the relationship between existing operators and agencies trying to newly provide public transportation. There is a lot of variance on how powerful the operator consortia are. Some of them have political power and that changes the equation when it comes to figuring out how to regulate and what types of deals to offer to existing paratransit or private transportation operators to get them to participate with the new BRT or keep their services in some way. One response is to bring in some existing minivan drivers to drive new vehicles on the new BRT lines and pay out the rest to retire their vehicles.

In case of Capetown, all three operators were bought out for large amounts of money when negotiating the contract. In Baranquilla the consortia wasn’t as established and there was a reduction in service because there weren’t big payouts. There has been a lot of research done on payment contracts and they play a role in whether resulting services can provide similar service than the previous one.

The physical and institutional structure of the system sounds critical for success. Can you explain the other challenge of automobility?

Every transit investment in the world is pushing against the tide of “automobility”, which is the use of the automobile as the major means of transport.

Recently, there has been a huge boom in motorcycle ownership across Latin America. This is largely because motorcycle prices have come down, whether they’re being manufactured in Latin America or bought cheaply from Asia. With a motorcycle, you can get anywhere cheap and fast, so unless you’re right on a trunk line, there’s no reason to use BRT. The same thing is happening to some extent in Capetown, although there it’s strictly about auto ownership. This is the case pretty much everywhere else around the world too.

In Ecuador, there is a huge subsidy for petrol which makes it ridiculously cheap to drive. Even Quito’s well developed public transportation isn’t as fast as automobiles and taxis for most trips, and partly because auto use is so cheap, transit fares can’t be charged anywhere near what the system costs. That creates a negative spiral in which the system can’t be maintained and may eventually fall apart. Without high gas taxes, the cost of automobility is artificially low and public transit starts off at a deficit.

Another problem in Quito, Barranquilla, Capetown, and elsewhere is land use. Regulations promoting low-density new developments that require a lot of parking mean there isn’t sufficient population density to retain an ongoing market for public transportation. Significant reform is needed on the land use regulation side of the equation.

Are there any lessons from your case studies that other cities could learn from?

All these cities are learning at the same time. Frankly, BRT has been sold as a cure-all to many places but more cities have become aware of having to be much more strategic with how they bring in pre-existing operators when creating BRT plans. For example, Jakarta had a lot of competition and not enough planning on their lines, so it was a terrible system. They are now remedying that by not making decisions without the input of paratransit operators.

BRT is really just one piece of a larger transportation network. There is so much that is specific to each individual metropolitan area, but everything comes down to various kinds of resources: especially human capital and time. There will be less of those in cities struggling with other issues, rather than those that are strongly connected with the global economy and have the funding to attract people with better education and more experiences.

So much is context-specific but there are some basics: you have to involve users and residents of neighborhoods in the planning processes so that the systems put in place are serving people well.

This interview is the part of a partnership series between ITDP, Meeting of the Minds, and Volvo Research and Education Foundations (VREF). In this series, we will feature interviews with researchers from VREF’s Future Urban Transport program. The original interview conducted by Meeting of the Minds can be foundhere.

Urban populations all over the world are soaring, with cities expected to add up to 2.5 billion more people by 2050.

While cities are booming as economic and social centers, resources and opportunities are too often concentrated in high-income areas—pushing less affluent communities farther and farther away from the city center and from basic services like employment, schools, and hospitals. Urban regions are expanding outward so fast that the total land area covered by the world’s cities will triple in the next forty years. Without smart planning, this will only result in more sprawl, isolation, and marginalization for poorer communities on the urban outskirts.

Often, the crux of the problem is a lack of good transportation systems to connect everyone—no matter their income level or location—with opportunities. In fact, according to ITDP’s research, metro regions in low- and middle-income countries are providing only a quarter of residents, at best, with mass transit. All too often, those who need transit and transport options the most are those who have the least access to it.

Let’s create inclusive cities made for all, where everyone has the opportunity to thrive. Become an ITDP Member with a $40 gift.

Cities are at a tipping point, and now is our chance to create a bold and inclusive urban vision. Building truly inclusive cities means providing everyone with reliable transit, safe sidewalks and bike lanes, and urban development that is compact and close to transit. Connecting people with opportunity, regardless of where they live, is key to creating sustainable cities.

Thanks to support from Members like you, we’ve made strides towards fostering inclusive cities across the globe:

Johannesburg BRT

The Johannesburg bus rapid transit system (BRT), Rea Vaya, illustrates how good transit systems can connect poor communities to opportunity and even help heal old wounds of racial segregation. South Africa’s first major initiative to redress apartheid’s legacy of racial town planning, Rea Vaya provides a quick, safe link for residents of historically black communities like Alexandra Township, one of the poorest urban areas in the country, to the central business district and the opportunities and services that come with it. Access to Rea Vaya has also reduced commuting times by half for many residents.

Social Housing in Brazil

Providing plenty of affordable housing is critical for inclusive cities. But what good is housing if residents don’t have access to jobs or schools? In Brazil, more than twenty-five million people will live in Minha Casa Minha Vida federal housing by 2019, but many units are in remote parts of the city—sometimes four hours and multiple transit transfers away from employment and other services. In response, ITDP worked with the Brazilian national government to create first-of-its-kind policy criteria to make sure new housing is located near transit— strengthening access to opportunities while providing homes for millions of low-income residents. (Photo to the left by Alberto Coutinho/AGECOM)

Your support is making a difference but we still need your help to ensure cities are made for you with equitable and sustainable transport that connects everyone with the city. Your $40 gift to ITDPwill help make truly inclusive cities a reality.

The Rapid Transit to Resident Ratio (RTR) is a small statistic with a lot of information. The metric compares a country’s urban population (cities with more than 500,000 people) with the length of rapid transit lines (including rail, metro, and BRT) that serve them. This metric offers a snapshot of the access, equity, and quality of life that come with increased transport options and that allow countries to track progress over time.

Many factors influence RTR. A dense city may require less transit length to provide the same level of access as a more sprawling city with the same population. Because of this, RTR is perhaps most useful for comparing transit growth over time. As populations grow, transit investment must at least keep pace with that growth and must increase faster than population growth in order to improve the ability of people to move around cities.

This map presents a baseline for countries to gauge their transit growth in the coming years. Across a diverse range of financing and development levels, countries can all make smart investments in their infrastructure, and in turn, an investment in their people.

On top of a shopping center overlooking Yiling Park in the center of Yichang, China, is a nearly 100 meter long by 10 meter high screen announcing the city’s coming BRT system. Impossible to miss, the sign keeps the benefits of the corridor front and center. The billboard is just one of the ways that Yichang is fast becoming one of the best examples of public outreach to build support and understanding for its BRT as construction proceeds over the coming year. Around the world, cities are taking steps to make sure their high-quality BRT systems are supported by strong public relations campaigns, leading to a supportive political atmosphere and ensuring healthy system ridership.

A prominent advertisement for the upcoming BRT stretches across a shopping center along the corridor in Yichang, China.

From the earliest stages of BRT planning through to a fully operational system, public communication is a critical part of any BRT system. On the BRT Standard Scorecard, Communications is given 5 points, rewarding systems with strong branding and passenger information. Line 5 of Mexico City’s Metrobús was the city’s first Complete Street. Advertising in stations, brochures and the buses helped highlight the extra benefits of the high quality corridor and earned Line 5 high marks for communication. The BRT Planning Guide has additional information about how to use communications to maximize a BRT system’s benefits.

But public communication shouldn’t wait for the system to open to get started. Though BRT’s short implementation periods minimize the disruption to the city’s streets, some inconvenience is inevitable during construction. A robust public communications plan helps explain the benefits to come and justify the inconveniences. Successful cities have seen public support for a system actually rise during construction, as the public learns more and becomes invested in the project.

Though the system won’t open for nearly a year, residents of Yichang can hardly turn their heads without learning more about the BRT. Advertisements on shopping centers across the city and on buildings along the corridor broadcast the message “better streets, better mobility”, display corridor maps and station renderings provided by ITDP, and list the benefits the corridor will bring. Even the traffic police are on board, handing out leaflets with helpful routes and information as they manage the shifts in traffic flow caused by construction.

O Explicador has helped spread the world about how to use Rio de Janeiro’s new BRT systems.

In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the city worked hard to make sure the public was ready to jump on board the day TransCarioca opened. Central to the campaign was a new character, “The Explainer“, a friendly, helpful traffic cone. The Explainer appeared in Youtube videos, advertisements on existing buses, and in newspapers letting city residents know how to use the system, and how they benefited. Following his success promoting TransCarioca, The Explainer has continued to be an important tool for Rio’s City Hall, now being used to spread the word about additional transportation infrastructure projects throughout the city.

In Johannesburg, South Africa, system planners engaged local residents by launching a naming contest for 16 Rea Vaya stations in 2012. As construction on corridor 1b continued, the city encouraged local leaders and area residents to suggest and vote on names for stations in their districts. According to MMC for Transport Rehana Moosajee, the contest helped local residents feel a sense of ownership over the system and boosted enthusiasm ahead of the corridor opening.

“Changing the general public’s perceptions about public transportation is fundamental to building project support” – the BRT Planning Guide

Building a successful BRT system has many steps. As BRT is adopted in city after city around the globe, educating the public on how and why to use the system is critical for keeping the image of BRT on the rise. And as these cities have seen, often a little communication can go a long way.

Cape Town, South Africa is a 2012 nominee for the opening of its first BRT corridor and its integration with cycling as a first step in using transportation to increase inclusivity and accessibility. The My CiTi system opened, in an area of the city without much mass transit investment, with a 16 km corridor and plans to expand. Parallel to the BRT corridor, Cape Town has also opened the longest continuous bike way in Africa that spans the entire 16 km bus corridor. The city has also invested in other bike infrastructure; namely covered and secure bike parking at rail stations and bike storage on buses.

Travel time along the corridor has been reduced by about 50%, reducing trip time from an hour to an hour and a half to 35 minutes. The city has also introduced Euro IV buses to Cape Town, helping reducing the particulate matter in the air improve population health.

Cape Town’s achievements over the past year will serve as a model for the rest of the continent.

This week Cape Town unveiled the first phase of the MyCiTi bus service, between Table View and the Civic Centre, on its Integrated Rapid Transit System. The new service is already transforming the way residents view buses. The bus is a salve to many who previously dealt with a complicated network of taxis, buses and rail. One passenger, whose commute was reduced to only 30 minutes, commented, “I used to sit in traffic for two hours…I’m falling in love with the bus already”.

City officials have also praised the system, saying that it will improve the city’s transport system and lessen traffic congestion. However, ANC Mayoral Candidate Tony Ehrenreich, would like to see more priority given to extending the service to the city’s poor, who travel from Khayelitsha and Mitchells Plain (the largest townships outside of Cape Town) on over-crowded trains and buses.

The launch today follows lengthy negotiations with the local taxi operators, a similar situation that Johannesburg’s Rea Vaya experienced. A contract was finally signed on late Sunday, less than a day before the My CiTi launch.

ITDP has played a critical role in the business and financial planning for the system.

On February 22, 2010, The New York Times ran an article exploring the ways that Johannesburg, South Africa’s new bus rapid transit system has brought economic opportunity to some of the city’s poorest and most disadvantaged residents. In doing so, the new transit system has challenged entrenched interests in a country with a long history of racial divide. ITDP is proud to have been a lead advisor to the city of Johannesburg from the very beginning of this project. Read the full article here.

In our view, it is the first world-class bus rapid transit system of its kind in Africa. While bus rapid transit is renowned for its ability to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the New York Times article highlights the important social part of ITDP’s mission – providing safe and affordable transport options to the poor while bringing them to jobs and economic empowerment. Please take a moment to read the article, view the slideshow, and watch the video here.

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